I own a TP-Link TL-WR1043 V2.1 wireless router, I would like to test if it is able to run on OpenWRT or DD-WRT. it is first tested on OpenWRT, DD-WRT later, so far it has been working flawlessly for me.

About TP-Link TL-WR1043 V2.1 Wireless Router TP-Link TL-WR1043 V2.1 is a 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit Router, it has more memory (64MB) compared with the TL-WR1043 V1.x. Here is the comparison:

Most of the time, I use both WinSCP (Windows Secure CoPy) & PuTTY together, especially when work with Openwrt and DD-Wrt. It is very troublesome to start each program individually. So I decided to integrate PuTTY into WinSCP.

I would suggest to download the portable version for both WinSCP & Putty. With the portable version, you can easily copy WinSCP & PuTTY from one computer to another computer without erase the settings.

WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client, SCP client, FTPS client and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is file transfer between a local and a remote computer. I use this sofware to transfer files from my WinXP computer to the router.

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Windows and Unix platforms. I use this software to SSH to router & perform flashing command.

Enable SSH

Open up a browser and navigate to http://192.168.1.1 (you should use your own IP)

Login in to DD-WRT.

Goto Services tab and enable SSH

Goto Administration/Management and enable SSH

Copy firmware file to Router

Unzip the downloaded firmware fileto any folder, now you have wr1043nv1_en_3_13_10_up(120210).bin in your computer